Cyber attack

RFE/RL, on the mass cyber attack which peaked on Monday, hitting its broadcast services and making them inaccessible to the outside world:

The attack, which started on April 26, intially targeted the website of RFE/RL's Belarus Service, but quickly spread to other sites. Within hours, eight RFE/RL websites (Belarus, Kosovo, Azerbaijan, Tatar-Bashkir, Radio Farda, South Slavic, Russian, and Tajik) were knocked out or otherwise affected.

The "denial-of-service" (DOS) attack was intended to make the targeted website unavailable to its users, according to RFE/RL's Director of Technology Luke Springer. "The way this is normally done is by flooding the target website with fake requests to communicate, thereby using up all [the website's] free sources and rendering the site useless to all the legitimate users," Springer said.

Sphere of Influence

From today's RFE/RL Newsline:

RUSSIA STRESSES NEW DEMAND ON MISSILE DEFENSE...
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Ekho Moskvy radio on April 8 that Moscow wants a permanent military presence at planned U.S. missile-defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic. Lavrov argued that "in all the many proposals [on missile defense], we are interested only in two things: the permanent presence of our officers and reliable technological means of monitoring" the sites. During his recent summit with U.S. President George W. Bush in Sochi, President Vladimir Putin referred to a possible permanent presence at those sites if "a global missile-defense [system] with equal democratic-style access to managing such a system" does not come to pass. Russia does not appear to have publicly stressed the issue of a permanent presence before, but Lavrov said on April 8 that it is a sticking point in negotiations over Washington's plans to station a radar base in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in Poland. He argued that it is important for Moscow to see "second-by-second" where the radar is directed and what is happening at the interceptor base. In an apparent effort to split Washington from Prague just days after a U.S.-Czech agreement on the radar site was announced, Lavrov warned that Czech or Polish resistance to the Russian demand would "devalue" recent assurances given to Russia by the United States on missile defense. He complained that officials of the two countries, which were occupied by Soviet forces for decades, "don't even want to hear" about a permanent Russian presence at the sites (see "RFE/RL Newsline," February 27, March 7 and 20, and April 4, 2008). Lavrov mocked the U.S. offer of "reciprocity" in arranging occasional inspections of the sites by Russian officials based in Warsaw and Prague, saying that Russia has no intention of establishing its own bases in those countries or near the United States. Asked if Russia might set up military sites of its own in Cuba or Venezuela in response to the U.S. plans, Lavrov replied that Russia would rely on unspecified "military-technical measures" instead. PM

...PROVOKING CRITICISM IN POLAND
Foreign Minister Lavrov's demand on April 8 for a permanent Russian presence at planned U.S. missile-defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic came after the latest round of Russian-Polish consultations in Moscow failed to bridge differences, news agencies reported. Witold Waszczykowski, who heads the Polish negotiating team, told Poland's PAP news agency that Lavrov's demands are "too far-fetched." Referring to a possible permanent Russian military presence in Poland, Waszczykowski said that "we had that here already [in tsarist and Soviet times]. Such a solution will not be repeated." He added that the proposed missile-defense "installation could be accessible to visitors or inspectors, but we don't think there is any need for a permanent presence of Russian monitors there.... In addition to that, we have to establish a sort of mutual regime, with Polish inspectors having the right to inspect some Russian installations." Czech officials have repeatedly rejected the idea of any permanent Russian presence at the radar site, although they, too, would be willing to consider occasional visits by Russian officials. Czech Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra told the daily "Hospodarske noviny" recently that "we are willing to negotiate about Russian inspections, but definitely not in the form of a permanent presence of Russian soldiers in the Czech Republic." Some European observers suggested that Russia is keen to keep up its political momentum after the April 2-4 Bucharest NATO summit. Russia was widely seen to have used energy and political leverage over Germany, France, and some other Western European states to ensure their opposition to U.S. and Eastern European support for granting Membership Action Plans (MAP), an important step on the road to full NATO membership, to Georgia and Ukraine (see "RFE/RL Newsline," April 3, 4, 7, and 8, 2008). PM

RUSSIA AGAIN VOWS TO BLOCK NATO ENLARGEMENT
Foreign Minister Lavrov told Ekho Moskvy radio on April 8 that Moscow will do all it can to prevent NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia in order "to avoid an inevitable serious exacerbation of our relations with both the alliance and our neighbors." He repeated Moscow's long-standing arguments that NATO enlargement is rooted in "Cold War logic," that much of the Ukrainian public is opposed to NATO membership, and that the pro-Moscow leaderships of Georgia's breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions oppose Georgian membership. Russian Ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin wrote in the April 7 issue of the government daily "Rossiiskaya gazeta" that "all countries seeking to join NATO have to hold a referendum first. The decision has to be made by all Ukrainian citizens. Would they be prepared to send their boys to certain death in Iraq or Afghanistan for the sake of Atlantic solidarity?" "The Moscow Times" commented on April 9, however, that "Russia's main argument against NATO enlargement is that it would threaten its security. That is nonsense, and Russia knows it." The paper added that "the Kremlin has found that behaving like a spoiled child gets results: the right to influence developments in former Soviet countries. In other words, Russia is being allowed to reassert its sphere of influence -- a concept that should have been superceded by that of 'Europe Whole and Free,' which the entire European Union appeared to have embraced when communism collapsed." The daily stressed that "the crux of the matter is Europe's lack of political will to forge a unified stand toward Russia. This has led the Kremlin to pursue a classic 'divide-and-rule' strategy by tempting some big European countries into bilateral agreements -- particularly on energy issues -- that preclude a common EU position" (see End Note, "RFE/RL Newsline," March 17, 2008). Alluding to the Western European objections to MAPs for Georgia and Ukraine, Polish President Lech Kaczynski commented on the eve of the NATO summit that West Germany was allowed to join NATO in 1955 even though it claimed to represent, but did not control, all of Germany. The Polish daily "Rzeczpospolita" pointed out recently that Germany did not hold a referendum in 1990 on NATO membership for the former East Germany, where strong pacifist and anti-American sentiments might have led to a rejection of NATO accession. PM

RUSSIAN LEGISLATOR TOUTS CHINESE MILITARY COOPERATION, DESPITE FALLING TRADE
Colonel General Viktor Zavarzin, the head of the State Duma's Defense Committee, said in Beijing on April 8 that military cooperation plays an important role in Russian-Chinese relations, Interfax reported. He noted that "the total number of events at which key subjects in Russian-Chinese military cooperation are discussed is 30 to 35 a year. Chinese specialists are trained at Russian Defense Ministry academies. Direct ties between the respective military services [and] military academies...are improving." Zavarzin added that joint exercises and inspections take place along and near the two countries' common border. His remarks follow recent reports that Russian arms sales to China dropped by 62 percent in 2007 because China's industrial capabilities are beginning to approach those of its neighbor, and because it seeks more sophisticated technology than Russia is willing or able to offer (see "RFE/RL Newsline," March 31, 2008, and End Note, "RFE/RL Newsline," September 12, 2007, and March 12, 2008). PM

The Unravelling of Russia's Europe Policy

By Peter Zeihan

via Stratfor

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his anointed successor, Dmitri Medvedev, were in Bulgaria on Jan. 17. The point of the trip was to put the crowning touch on a Russian effort to hook Europe into Moscow’s energy orbit. After a touch of bitter rhetoric about how Russia and Bulgaria were “doomed to be partners,” Putin agreed to grant equal rights to the South Stream natural gas pipeline Moscow hopes to lay through Bulgaria. Yet the tension of the meeting and the concessions that Putin had to make simply to get permission are symptomatic of a broad unraveling of Russian foreign policy toward Europe.

The Russian Scheme

Russia often has had a love-hate relationship with Europe. Dating back to the time of the czars, Moscow has had to aim for a mix of economic integration and military intimidation to make its voice heard. In the aftermath of the Cold War and the degradation of the Red Army, the military intimidation factor has largely fallen away, leaving economics as the primary method of impacting Europe. In this, Russia has forces at its disposal every bit as useful as Soviet tank divisions. Cold War-era infrastructure provides the 27-member European Union with roughly one-quarter of the natural gas and oil it consumes. Such dependence might not be sufficient to force European deference, but it certainly guarantees that Europe will hear Russia out.

Natural gas is unique among the various industrial and energy commodities. The combination of its gaseous nature and the sheer bulk that is required to power large economies (the European Union uses more than half a trillion cubic meters of the stuff a year) means that it can only be efficiently transported via pipeline. While oil and coal and alumina and wheat and platinum can all be loaded into trucks, rail cars and tankers — allowing any producer to supply any consumer — natural gas can travel only along existing pipeline networks. Canada therefore only supplies the United States and Russia only supplies former Soviet republics, Turkey and Europe. This contained relationship gives Russia leverage in a way that its mineral and oil wealth do not. And so it is here that the Europeans have tried — with some success — to slice through the ties that bind.

Putin has sought to strengthen this energy leverage via two pipeline projects in particular. The two natural gas lines — Nord Stream, which would run under the Baltic Sea from St. Petersburg to Germany; and the aforementioned South Stream, which would run under the Black Sea from near Novorossiysk to Bulgaria — would increase the European dependency on Russian natural gas from 25 percent to 35 percent of its total consumption.

Economically, neither of these projects makes sense. Building long underwater pipelines to Europe — a region with which the former Soviet Union shares a land connection — is simply asinine; landlines typically cost less than a third of their underwater equivalents. Additionally, Nord Stream would be the world’s longest underwater natural gas pipeline and South Stream the deepest.

But the Russians did not plan these projects with profitability in mind — having tripled their natural gas export prices since 2000, they have profit aplenty. Instead, they are thinking of the Americans. The Kremlin’s Cold War mantra has long been that if the Europeans can be neutralized, then American influence can be purged from Europe. Ergo, American presidents dating back to Ronald Reagan have opposed (explicitly or not) any expansion of trade and energy links between Europe and Russia. And there also is the minor detail of Russia hating to involve transit states such as Belarus and Ukraine that are able to siphon off Russian energy en route to hard-currency-paying Europeans.

Given the political nature of these projects, then, the numbers have always been a touch wacky. The Russians have underestimated the costs of both of the natural gas lines to a humorous degree (likely by a factor of four or more), they lack the technological ability to build the lines themselves and they have insisted that the Europeans foot the bills. Specifically they expect ENI to pay for South Stream, and BASF, Gasunie and E.On to cover Nord Stream. Topping it off, they expect themselves — not the countries on which the pipes will lie or the companies that finance and build them — to own the projects when they are completed.

The European Response

The Europeans certainly exchanged some worried looks when these projects were proposed and Russia started assembling consortia to work on them. But in January 2006 an event happened that galvanized European action to wean the Continent off of Russian energy. A natural gas pricing dispute with Ukraine resulted in a brief suspension of deliveries to Europe (Russian natural gas deliveries to Europe currently transit Ukraine and Belarus). Russia attempted to leverage this energy crisis to force the Europeans to back Russian policy in Ukraine. Specifically, Moscow wanted Europe to repudiate Ukraine’s Orange Revolution against Russia’s preferred Ukrainian government and recognize Russian suzerainty in the former Soviet Union.

The strategy backfired and sparked intense interest across Europe in diversifying sources of petroleum and reducing total demand. European states and firms launched alternative supply lines, rafts of terminals were built to import natural gas shipped by tanker in more expensive liquefied form, a new fleet of nuclear reactors were commissioned, and the European Union adopted ambitious alternative energy and conservation programs (which incidentally dovetailed nicely with Europe’s anti-greenhouse-gas plans). The formal European goal is now to reduce total energy consumption by 20 percent — with 20 percent of the remaining total coming from alternative sources — by 2020. The EU states are still squabbling over who needs to bear what specific burdens, but there is no disagreement as to the goal — or the reasons it exists in the first place.

There are two questions remaining.

The Question of Time

First, how long will it be until the Russians realize that their energy tool is no longer sharp? The answer is, longer than you might think.

The Russians have persevered in their pursuit of these projects despite increasingly obvious signs that the Europeans not only are not interested in the projects, they are not interested in the Russians. In part it is because, if Moscow’s plan were realized, it would be a very good plan indeed, as it would harness Europe irrevocably to Russia.

But mostly the lack of realization is because of Russia’s historical blind spot. Russia’s wide-open geography means that it has few barriers to invasion. Consequently, Russian history is one of occasional foreign occupation, which has resulted in a culture that mixes xenophobia, bitterness, persecution and a sense of entitlement in equal measure. This idea of “we have suffered so much so you should do what we say” — a sort of superiority complex based on an inferiority complex — clouds Russian strategic thinking and contributes to the seeming inability of the Kremlin to sense that the Chinese are stealing Central Asia from under the Russian nose.

It also explains why the Russians have not realized that the Europeans are moving away from them in as expeditious manner as feasible. The European reactions to Russian entreaties on these natural gas projects can best be summated as humoring the Russians. Few states want an out-and-out breach in their relations with Moscow, which could result in an actual and immediate energy cutoff before the Europeans are prepared to sever economic ties. So they have been taking advantage of Russia’s cultural blind spot while quietly developing alternatives.
This is doubly true for firms such as E.On and Gasunie, which supposedly are involved in consortia to build the projects. All are key purchasers of Russian energy exports and have found it easier to feign support than to be bluntly honest and so risk losing reliable deliveries of Russia natural gas. The one possible exception might be ENI, which is desperate for any source of natural gas to maintain its market position in Italy. But even here, it is far from clear that a single firm — even one as large as ENI — can shoulder realistically the massive burden of financing and building a project as questionable as South Stream by itself.

Years from now, Putin’s Jan. 17 trip to Bulgaria will likely be seen as the turning point in the European-Russia power balance, because that is when the humoring broke down. As Putin was en route to Bulgaria, Sofia insisted that, should South Stream come about, it will be Sofia — not Moscow — that holds a majority share in the portion on Bulgarian territory. A compromise — a 50-50 ownership split — was ultimately struck, simply because there is little Moscow can do to punish Bulgaria without deeply damaging its own interests. Bulgaria does not border Russia (or any former Soviet republic) and since it is a transit state for Russian natural gas to third countries, it cannot simply be cut off.

Bulgaria is hardly the bravest or most powerful of the EU states. It also is not among the crop that has done the most to diversify its energy consumption away from Russian sources. Consequently, it stands to reason that the nod-and-smile approach that has dominated European attitudes toward all things Russian is starting to crack. In the first 10 months of 2007 alone, total European demand for natural gas already dipped sharply, according to International Energy Agency data — reversing a 50-year upward trend.

Add in increased alternative supplies that are not merely prospective (such as the Nord and South Streams), but actually under construction — within three years Europe will have established alternatives for at least two-thirds of the natural gas Russia currently supplies — and Russia’s energy grip on Europe is slackening quickly.

In short, Europe is reorienting its entire energy sector to eliminate the “Russian factor.” This is allowing the Europeans to take a firmer line on Russia in other areas as well. For example, on Jan. 17 the European Union gave Ukraine the green light to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). Until recently the Europeans had expected Ukraine under a pro-Russian government to join the WTO at the same time as Russia, so the Europeans played softball with the Russians in accession negotiations. But now that a pro-Western coalition has returned to power in Kiev, and since a pro-Western Ukraine will have the ability to block Russian accession on its own, the Europeans sense an opportunity to pry Ukraine out of Russia’s economic orbit and lash it into Europe’s. Consequently European negotiators have switched to hardball tactics on economic issues ranging from timber to transport, pushing back — yet again — serious efforts to bring Russia itself into the WTO.

Such isolation is far more damning than it sounds. According to the European Commission, if energy is shorn from Russian-European trade, then the new (much reduced) total value of that trade shrinks to an amount equal to that of the European Union’s trade with Iceland, a country with fewer than half a million people.

The Question of Response

That brings us to the second question. What will the Russians do about it?

For Russia, the challenge is not about the lost income — between rainy day funds and currency reserves, Moscow has socked away nearly $700 billion — but lost influence. Russia’s other exports, primarily metals, minerals and weapons, still fetch a pretty penny and put Russian fingers in pots the world over, but none grant it influence where it truly matters: in Europe.
Russia faces a near future in which the economic might of Europe will reinforce the geopolitical ambitions of the United States. Washington’s desire to whittle Russia back to a more manageable size is nothing new, but few realize that Brussels has its own ambitions. The Europeans would like to expand their economic reach into the bulk of the territory between the EU border and Moscow, as well as into the Caucasus. Europe does not see this as an imperialist venture, but simply as the natural order of things. The Russians, of course, see the world through a different lens, and European plans would be even more damaging in the long run to Russian interests than will American efforts, as they would make these border territories not only politically unreliable, but rather like the Baltics: firmly integrated into a rival system.

If economic tools no longer are relevant, Russia will be forced to fall back on political and military tactics, including:

Military intimidation of the Baltics and Finland.
Reunion with Belarus and a return of the Red Army to the Polish border.
Overt intervention in the Russian-speaking portions of Ukraine.
Active and public participation in Georgia’s secessionist conflicts, both to block European influence and to disrupt some of those alternate energy supplies.
Support for Europe’s various secessionist regions.

None of these options is clean and easy, and all are laden with consequences. Two of those consequences are critical enough to warrant mention here. First, any action from this list would rejuvenate NATO to the point that a Western military response, likely resulting in a new containment strategy, would be a foregone conclusion. Second, a renewed Russian confrontation with the West would certainly provide ample opportunity for China to make inroads into Central Asia and the Russian Far East, a region where Russia’s own intelligence services warn that Chinese squatters already might constitute the majority of the population. Yet with Russia’s economic toolkit impotent, such options are all that remain before the Kremlin.

Russia’s best hope is to recognize, before it is too late, that the tide is irrevocably turning. But Moscow faces one other complication in wrestling with the changing geopolitical reality — one that could critically delay an adjustment in strategies: itself.

Though Putin is undoubtedly the man in charge, he is not the only one with ambition. His inner circle is split roughly in half by a clan war between Vladislav Surkov and Sergei Ivanov. Both are loyal to Putin, but their battles have absorbed the majority of the state’s ability to deal with any issue. While the two overlords clash, the Europeans make ever-greater strides toward freeing themselves from dependence on Russian energy, steadily closing the window of opportunity for the Russians to adjust.

And when that window closes, Russia will face a world in which the United States no longer is consumed with all things Middle Eastern and the Europeans no longer are afraid of all things Russian.

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Single Entity

J.R. Nyquist, on the workings of what Anna Politkovskaya called the "single entity" that is composed of the Russian presidential secretariat and the FSB:

An important book has been published on all these machinations. It is titled Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, by Alex Goldfarb with Marina Litvinenko. One of the most important passages in the book, for Americans, is the passage where Akhmed Zakayev explains the origins of the Second Chechen War: “We wanted to build a secular, democratic, pro-Western Muslim state, something along the lines of Turkey,” Zakayev is quoted as saying. But Russian-speaking Arabs flooded into Chechnya with Russian visas. “They were all experienced fighters,” he said, “but they had nothing to do with … the American-trained jihadists that fought the Soviets in Afghanistan. They were all Arabs who spoke Russian, the old KGB cadre from the Middle East. And we knew that their money came not from Saudi Arabia, but from Moscow.”

That is important information coming from an exiled Chechen leader. The civil war in Chechnya was a staged provocation, organized by the FSB and the presidential administration in Moscow. Vladimir Putin, in fact, was a leading organizer who profited from this operation. The Arab terrorists in Dagestan and Chechnya caused his appointment as prime minister, triggering a war to facilitate his subsequent elevation to the Russian presidency. The political maneuvers and conspiracies involved in the elevation of Putin, as detailed by Goldfarb, are must reading. For the first time, testimony from several sources is put together to form a larger, coherent picture of FSB (KGB) strategy involving the use of controlled Islamic terrorism.

(via Mark Pettifor.
NB - J.R. Nyquist has a newly redesigned website at this link)

Rewriting history

In one of her latest newsletters, Estonian politician Mari-Ann Kelam comments on the West's failure to understand the processes that are currently taking place in Russia, and observes:

By coincidence, I have been reading another book about how Reagan brought down the Soviet Union. The way the West is going now, we seem to be helping Putin to rebuild it! Actually Putin is building something worse -this time, thanks to the clever use of modern media technology playing on nationalism and xenophobia combined with strong central control, the subjugated are supporting what he is doing. The West has been and continues to do almost all the wrong things.

One of the texts referred to by MAK in her letter is a new manual for Russia's history teachers, discussed by Andrew Osborn in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. Among other things, Osborn writes:

Backed by support from the president himself, the book, which rails against U.S. hegemony, is raising fears among some historians that the Kremlin is -- quite literally -- trying to rewrite history in a way that risks breeding ultranationalism and whitewashing the darkest chapters of Russia's past.

Mr. Putin gave the manual a presidential boost last month, inviting its author along with a number of historians and teachers to his residence totalk history. Though he said students should be allowed to draw their ownconclusions, he made clear that events should be portrayed in a way that fuels national pride.

The manual's publication comes as the Kremlin is trying to restore Russians' sense of pride after the anarchic 1990s. In recent years, celebrations marking the Red Army's victory over Nazi Germany have been cranked up, the authority of the Czarist-era Orthodox Church has been boosted and patriotic youth groups have become increasingly vocal about Russia's resurgence.

The moves have complemented an increasingly assertive Kremlin foreign policyand a flat rejection of Western criticism that Moscow is moving to undermine democratic institutions. The new teachers' manual is the clearest sign yet that the drive to inculcate the Kremlin's view of the world is reaching Russia's millions of schoolchildren. "We are forming...the worldview of a nation, of how Russians see themselves and the outside world," Leonid Polyakov, editor of the new manual, told Mr.Putin at last month's meeting, according to a transcript released by the Kremlin.

Litvinenko suspect "might hand himself over"

Via RFE/RL:

May 28, 2007 — A Russian wanted in Britain on charges of murdering Kremlin critic Aleksandr Litvinenko has said that he does not rule out handing himself over to the British Embassy in Moscow.

But Andrei Lugovoi said in a May 27 interview on Russian television channel NTV that the British would have to “make a gesture” toward him before he considers handing himself over. He did not say what sort of gesture he had in mind.

The KGB's Guide to the UK

During the Cold War the Soviet KGB produced detailed maps of most of the countries of the world. These included Great Britain: with the help of aerial photgraphs, satellite images, local knowledge and espionage, 16,000 square kilometres of the United Kingdom were mapped, including 103 major towns and cities.

The maps have now been made available by the UK’s Landmark Information Group, and although most of them are to be released on a commercial basis, some are being offered free during the month of March on the company’s website.

One expert comments:

"Realising the military, economic and political benefits of topographic information, the Soviet military set about mapping the whole world - a mammoth task which took over 50 years before, during and after the Cold War to complete. Today, very little is known about how the organisation was structured and how such incredible results were achieved. Certainly the operation was militarily driven, very well controlled, achieving spectacular results. Ultimately, futile of course, if the purpose was world domination, but for mapping professionals they provide a fascinating and invaluable insight as to the structure of our towns and use of land during this period.”

(via ML)

Russia Revising Military Doctrine

FT notes that on March 5

Russia said it was revising its military doctrine to reflect other powers’ growing use of military force, while a Russian general warned again that Moscow could knock out elements of the US missile defence system planned for eastern Europe.

Thirteen Years

Today is February 23, the anniversary of Stalin's deportation of the Chechen people in 1944. and Prague Watchdog has published a special feature to commemorate the event.

Tamara Chagayeva has recorded the recollections of Nura Tsutiyeva, one of the witnesses of the deportation, who describes the month-long train journey into the unknown, and the "grey and monotonous life in an alien land": Thirteen Years Spent in a Reservation.